Sounds of Love (and other stories...)

2014 Roundup

A little bit of house keeping before I write the inevitable best of the year list. Below are three articles I wrote for various publications over the year but never got around to putting up here. They cover the gig of the year Kate Bush, Record Shop day and Stylus Stories (again!).

The Sounds of Love - Kate Bush 

Live at the Hammersmith Apollo 2014

This piece was done for http://www.the-monitors.com/ after a request for a review.

I’ve seen a few comeback gigs: The Specials (albeit sans Jerry Dammers), Eric Burdon and War, The Zombies, Brian Wilson, Television and Arthur Lee & Love to name but a few. It’s fair to say the results have been mixed. Some have been triumphant like Morrissey’s return to Manchester in 2004, some have frankly been heartbreaking; Arthur Lee was note perfect singing his Love classics but fell apart pitifully when attempting to add new songs to his repertoire. It was as if the weight of his early genius had crushed any hope of ever moving on. As he fluffed his lines, the look on his face suggested that he knew it, which was perhaps the saddest thing I’ve ever seen on a stage.

Sometimes the comeback trail only serves to remind you that in the midst of nostalgia you can’t actually go back, or indeed move forward. The stakes then, were ludicrously high for Kate Bush but even in this esteemed company I really can’t find a decent comparison.

Despite the opportunity to play any stadium in the world, Kate elected to ditch the notion of touring and instead took up a residency at the rather more intimate surroundings of the Hammersmith Apollo. For many fans this London-centric approach felt like a snub of sorts but the truth is there’s no way a show like this could tour in the traditional way. The cast featured well over a dozen musicians, dancers and puppeteers. The West End-style theatrics saw stage sets that would make Spinal Tap balk at the scale of her ambition.

Helicopters flew overhead in surround sound, the North Sea was viscerally recreated on stage and the climactic end to the hypnotizing second half drew us Icarus-like into ‘A Sky of Honey’. By the end of ‘Aerial’ (having already delivered the moon on a stick) the production team began literally tearing up trees before sending them crashing into the midst of the band. No really, it was nothing short of spectacular.

By now of course you probably know all this. You have probably heard that she dared not perform any of the seismic hits garnered from her first three LPs (let’s be honest, there aren’t many artists who could come back after 35 years and get away with side-stepping their best known work in favour of two hours of dramatic, but awkwardly surreal B-sides and get away with it). Every music hack and blogger with a restricted view has already spilled those beans so there’s little point in recanting the gushing praise for the work itself – so what is there left to talk about?

Well, what struck me was the atmosphere; the live experience is really about people. It’s about sharing a moment with strangers and feeling the relief of knowing you are not alone, that others see the beauty in what you see, and in that instant humanity is laid bare.

In my experience only Brian Wilson came close to matching the love on display here. Unlike Kate Bush however, Wilson cut a forlorn figure on stage. He was greeted with heartfelt sympathy and warmth by his legion followers, all of whom were well aware of the long hard psychological road he had walked to reach the point of return. His immense talent shared the stage equally with his evident confusion and fear of rejection. Propped up by his band, he still brought us the joy of his creation but we also left feeling sorry for ‘a broken man too tough to cry’.

In contrast, age may have brought Kate’s voice down a tone or two but she had lost none of her power. Adroit, confident and charismatic, she waltzed on stage with grace and aplomb. The palpable sense of love that greeted her was nothing short of joyous. The question that occurred to me is what made this emotional outpouring possible?

This was far from a greatest hits collection and contrary to what you might have been led to believe, neither was it a jolly West End musical. There was nothing easy about this show. A smattering of Top 40 singles was lost in a sea of experimental songs about death, loss and succumbing to happiness. The crowd was reverend to the point of submission and yet so charged by the event that I lost count of the number of standing ovations. What was it about Kate Bush that allowed this devotional trust to build in the hearts of many attendees who had plainly stopped participating in music some time ago? They weren’t day-tripping – they evidently had an unsullied attraction to this woman’s work and many wept openly at the waves of emotion rendered by her performance.

On reflection I think Kate Bush is the free spirit many of us want to be. A perfectionist with a deft human touch, a strong woman uncowed by external pressures to be something more saleable or easier to understand. She ploughs her own path, fiercely protective of her art and savvy enough to keep control of it. She is also divisive, you either get it or you don’t. This was her show on her terms.

Contrary to the myth promoted by the media that Kate Bush is some sort of mad Gelfling living in a pixie world singing ‘WOW’ on repeat, her actual stage presence was earthy and real. She has a sailor’s mouth and the crowd revelled in her description of her ‘fucking shit-hot’ band. She remains humble enough to encourage the audience to sing one of the cast members ‘Happy Birthday’ in the finale of her show. Not many superstars of old would be anywhere near that generous and giving to their minions. People recognised that generosity and responded in the manner it deserves.

The audience was as one, delighted to welcome back an old friend, energised by a sense of belonging and happy to be taken wherever Kate Bush wanted to go, with no questions asked. Perhaps the most telling part of the evening was right at the end when she stripped everything back, did away with props and sang unaccompanied on the piano – there she channelled pure emotion to a sell-out crowd with consummate ease. Hammersmith Apollo was bristling with love that night and I don’t think anyone attending will ever forget it.

Just one thing Kate, don’t leave it so long next time.

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Record Shop Day - That difficult second album

This piece was done for http://www.the-monitors.com/ after I became irritable at the bellyaching of certain music 'fans' regarding an attempt to revives actual Record Shops.

I love record shops almost as much as I love the records they sell. I worked in a record shop on and off for 15 years and often find myself daydreaming about returning to those golden days of relative financial impoverishment just to wallow in the plastic once again. There is no better feeling than turning someone on to an LP that can, on occasion, quite literally change someone’s outlook on life.

That said, when I talk to people about their memories of record shops (for that is all most people have), the most common complaint is that they felt like unwelcoming hipster strongholds where customers were often made to feel like their selection was somehow inadequate. To my mind this is a misleading impression; opinions are vital in this line of work, but the real buzz of having an opinion about music is sharing the love not shutting other viewpoints down.

Record Store Day has been spectacularly successful at revitalising the vinyl business. For the first time in years record shops are opening rather than closing down and Record Store Day has, for many retailers, become more profitable even than the run up to Christmas. The event has moved from satisfying a few hardcore vinyl addicts into tempting a whole new generation of customers into buying a deck and starting a collection. However, like any successful annual event it needs to evolve and adapt to its new status.

There are a number of genuine problems associated with the vinyl ‘boom’, but there are also a number of complaints that smack to me of those condescending hipsters who made many feel unwelcome in the music emporiums of old. A snobbishness is bubbling up; too many ‘major’ releases are deemed ‘bad’ for Record Store Day, but surely this is inevitable with an ever-increasing roster of limited editions. Of course the odd ‘Ghostbusters glow in the dark picture disc’ will come along but trying to vet releases on the grounds of good taste is essentially fascism.

I find it curious that many of the loudest voices in the run up to the event this year were keen to respond to the seven year itch by chopping off its head. How quickly we forget the near extinction that faced the vinyl industry less than a decade ago.

If the people don’t go out and buy the major label releases then I guarantee you that they will stop pressing the ‘shit’ that the cool kids sneer at. It’s also worth noting at this stage that the golden age of vinyl was driven by mass appeal, not niche interests. I have a very long list of complaints against major labels concerning the way they treat their artists and their lack of all-year-round support for retail but as long as the release is sold in a ‘shop’ then Record Store Day IS working. The calls for an ‘indie only’ event just shows a dearth of understanding in how the industry works. Many indie labels are funded at least partly by majors and stopped being truly indie decades ago.

It’s true that some indie labels are finding it hard to keep their release schedules up because the few vinyl pressing plants that survived the lean years are being booked up well in advance of record store day (often by major labels). This is a by-product of success, and whilst challenging for the labels it does not warrant the lynch mob that appear to be passing out pitch forks and flaming torches to any blogger with time on their hands. After all, it happens every year, a little forward planning may remedy the problem. It is also worth noting the title ‘Record STORE Day’, not ‘Indie Label Day’.

So much for the big bad wolf, on to the next bone of contention – touts. Those eBay bastards and their uncanny ability to get up earlier and queue for longer than the ‘real’ fans. I know, it is annoying but if you are going to trade on supplying rare, limited editions, what do you expect to happen? You want it because it’s rare, that is why it costs more and that is why touts like to make the effort and snaffle up the goods to resell. Last year I missed the Bowie 7-inch and got fleeced for £20 buying it on Discogs, but maybe if I had shown more willing, got up earlier and been more determined… well you get the idea. The simple solution to this is that shops reward their best customers with a guaranteed place in the queue, but of course if they did that then the complaint would be about favouritism.

This links nicely to the complaint that Record Store Day encourages those ‘once a year customers’. I honestly don’t see what the problem is there. A sale made in a shop that wouldn’t normally have been made is an extra sale and that is what Record Store Day is all about. Indeed, the fact that regular Joes are being tempted back into shops says it all. In the run up to Record Store Day the media is awash with talk of vinyl, and that’s the sort of PR that none of the few hundred surviving record shops could ever hope to afford. If the industry is to continue to develop then it will be by attracting new casual customers and not by circling the wagons to protect an ever-decreasing sales base.

Now I am not naïve enough to suppose all is rosy in the garden. The access to pressing plants is a problem. The financial outlay for smaller shops is also deeply problematic but let’s not allow snobbish thinking to kill the golden goose. Like any annual event Record Store Day needs careful nurturing and year on year reform but these are not insurmountable problems. Personally I would like to see less reissues and more new products but people buy those Ghostbuster reissues and that is their choice. The guy in the queue ahead of me was utterly stoked with his. I’m not about to tell him he is wrong for liking what he likes, I imagine he would hate most of my purchases.

Let’s remind ourselves of what the purpose of record store day is; to support the physical shops that remain. It might not be right for every shop but nothing is. All I know is that the queue at Flashback (see pic above) was long and good-natured, the shop made money and the punters got something special for their efforts. A bus ride away in Soho a shop-based street festival has grown into a life-affirming annual event, and across the country most record shops do very well off the back of Record Store Day. Sometimes you need to allow a little leniency for that difficult second LP if it is ever to be followed up by a brilliant third.

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Stylus Stories (Part 3)

This 'Stylus Stories' blog was written for http://www.trebuchet-magazine.com/ It is the third and final time I will 'big it up. Thank you for your patience. 

I’ve never really been good with photographs; to me cameras are untrustworthy witnesses to the past.

The number of photos that capture a moment perfectly is dwarfed by the amount that render you as some pitiful grotesque crawling out of a Hall of Mirrors. This is why I rarely take photographs. Fortunately for me I have a ‘phonographic memory’; every time I play a record my mind instantly recalls where I was when I first heard it, who I was with, what we were doing and perhaps most evocatively, how I felt at the time.

For many years I thought I was the only person who felt like this, but it appears I am not alone.

Stylus Stories is a high-concept get-together for music lovers who have a penchant for the plastic. The idea is simple, dig out your favourite vinyl mnemonics and share the stories associated with them. As the poster states – ‘we have the stylus; you bring the story’. The evening itself is run like an eccentric game show hosted by a quartet of sharp-suited music lovers: Victor Vinyl, Dansette Dave, Tommy Turntable and Stylus Steve. These DJs in DJs keep things on track with a mixture of gentle encouragement, good humour and (if required) the dreaded klaxon of quiet.

For such a seemingly niche idea my first evening with Stylus Stories was a surprisingly inclusive affair with speakers spanning six decades of popular music. It’s hard to say what was more surprising: the youthful enthusiasm of the younger vinyl lovers or the cultural wisdom of the septuagenarian skiffle fan who reminded all present that rebellion is nothing new.

What quickly became apparent is that the vinyl record has a unique hold over the collector – it shares your space, you end up hauling around when you move house – it becomes part of the furniture. This tactile association endears and as the “It’s a beautiful day” fan explained in her story; you can’t roll a joint on an MP3.

Many of the stories spoke of time. Time spent, times passed and times that would never come again. This is nostalgia on a grand scale, but the intimacy provided by the untrained speakers, acts as a counterbalance to the sort of rose tinted platitudes that characterise those interminable list shows on TV. Of course you must be aware that public speaking isn’t for everyone and these are not professional entertainers – naturally enough the quality varies but anthropological curiousity ensures an empathetic crowd.

Once you have told your tale you are invited to sit in a luxurious armchair and listen to the track. In truth the sitting down bit is tricky – perhaps the one part of the formula that needs work – five minutes listening to a song while a roomful of strangers stare at you is, to say the least, disconcerting.

Ultimately Stylus Stories is worth a little embarrassment, it is modern folklore, providing an insight into the human condition and a soundtrack to match. Ask yourself what would you play and what’s your story?